Nottingham beer boffins mass in Oregon for World Brewing Congress
By: JimOldfield
June 22nd, 2012
Ten members of the University of Nottingham’s Brewing Science faculty are off to Portland, Oregon next week – to tell the World Brewing Congress about their research work across all areas of brewing.
The Congress runs from July 29 to August 1, and the Nottingham team will staff a stand at the huge exhibition, and also give presentations and papers outlining aspects of the university’s extensive research programme.
These will include an oral paper from Prof Chris Boulton, entitled “New insights into the mechanisms underpinning diacetyl formation and reduction in large-capacity cylindroconical fermentations”.
Prof Boulton will be joined by the co-author of the paper, Joseph Sebastian, as part of his Masters of Research project.
Chris Powell will present a paper on the subject of yeast genetic drift, based around the work of Khiem Nguyen, an MRes student who will be submitting his thesis shortly.
Chris will also present a poster on stress tolerance and differences in fermentation properties between Saaz and Frohberg lager yeast strains.
In addition to his research work, Chris Powell will take over as head of the ASBC Technical Committee at the Congress – making him responsible for organising collaborative work aimed at evaluating new techniques for the brewing industry, an activity which is deemed to be core to the success of the ASBC.
Methods are evaluated by committees formed from volunteers throughout the brewing industry and if successfully approved, are entered into the ASBC Methods of Analysis, a world-wide recognised source of brewing techniques.
Chris will continue to act as a member of the ASBC Board of Directors in his new role, but will step down as Secretary for the society after serving a 2 year term of office.
And Wendy Box and Chris Powell will address an ASBC sub-committee concerned with yeast and microbiological issues in breweries, to report the results of a collaborative trial, lead by the University of Nottingham, which focussed on the use of rapid analysis to differentiate ale and lager yeast.
Alex Mott, a PhD student within Chris Powell’s research group, is the recipient of the ASBC Technical Committee grant for 2011-2012 and he will also attend to present a number of technical videos that he has produced for the ASBC.
These videos are hopefully the first in a series depicting practical laboratory techniques and will be used to add value to the ASBC Methods of Analysis.
Prof Boulton summed up the team’s excitement at attending the conference, saying: “Portland has a thriving brewing industry made up of numerous but comparatively small craft brewing enterprises.
“It has the highest number of breweries per capita of any US city”.
Hand-Pumped link:
www.nottingham.ac.uk/brewingscience/index.htm
